Parallax
by Rochelle Templer
Summary: Months after the Doctor's turbulent regeneration into his current incarnation, both he and Peri continue to deal with the issues it created. However, in the midst of their struggles, a change has begun. One that is subtle and mostly unnoticed by both of them. But when a new foe sees Peri as an instrument for revenge, this change might be the difference between life and death.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: New fic. As much as I'm having a blast writing for Second Doctor, I really wanted to spend some time with my other favorite, Sixth Doctor (or Sixie as he is often wonderfully referred to). Time-line wise, this fic takes place some time after Revelation of the Daleks and before the Trial of a Time Lord series. At any rate, I hope my readers will enjoy. :)

I do not own Doctor Who or any of its characters.

Thank you to everyone who reads/follows/favorites/reviews this. It is always appreciated.

Chapter One

As she continued her slow, tortuous climb up what seemed like the hundredth hill with the Doctor leaning even more heavily against her shoulder than he had a few minutes ago, Peri found herself asking the same question over and over again.

'_When will I learn to not get my hopes up?'_

* * *

_The whole thing had started innocently enough. After one of their latest adventures, the Doctor declared that they needed another holiday. Peri let out a sigh and rolled her eyes, none of which escaped the Doctor's notice. _

"_Am I to presume that you have some kind of objection, Peri?" he asked. "Isn't it usually you who is nagging me about the need for a change of pace? I thought you would be happy at the prospect of a proper holiday."_

"_You mean like the one we were supposed to have before we ended up battling the Cybermen on Telos?" she had replied. "Or when our supposed fishing trip ended up being a race to save your past self from being experimented on? Or maybe we're heading off to the Eye of Orion? That is if the coordinates haven't slipped your mind again."_

"_Are you trying to make a point?" he said testily. "Or do you actually expect me to come up with answers to these nonsensical questions?"_

"_My point, Doctor, is that every time you say that we're going on holiday, we end up in some dreadful place," Peri said, leaning against the console. "Just once, I'd appreciate it if we ended up somewhere nice where we can relax instead of on yet another hostile planet controlled by some megalomaniac who wants to rule the galaxy."_

_The Doctor stared at her for a moment, his lips pressed together and a flicker of what Peri could only consider petulance glittering in his light blue-green eyes. Then he brushed past her and pointedly stared at the console in front of him._

"_When you joined me, I thought you said that you wanted to see the wonders of the universe," he said. "What better way to do that than to liberate those downtrodden souls in need of assistance? You see Peri, it's in that moment, that moment when their spirits embrace the ideas of freedom and hope, that you are able to see the universe through new eyes. Are you now telling me that you would have preferred to simply walk away and blithely cast aside such important endeavors?"_

"_Well no," Peri said. "But that doesn't mean I want to cast aside our sanity too. Come on, Doctor, can't we take a break? I, I mean, I get what you're saying, but what's the point of seeing all these wonders of the universe if we never take the time to enjoy them?"_

"_Oh all right," the Doctor huffed, shaking his head. "You want relaxing? Fine. I've got just the place in mind: a place so languid, so inert, relaxing is about the only thing you can do."_

"_It sounds all right," Peri replied, wary. "As long as you're not thinking of setting us in the middle of a desert or something."_

"_I would hardly call the Royal Gardens of Nielos Five a desert, Peri," the Doctor said, distain crinkling his brow. "Easily some of the most exotic and the most beautiful botanical gardens in the galaxy. Or the universe for that matter."_

"_Botanical gardens?" Peri said, her face lighting up. The Doctor glanced up at her and responded with a small smile of his own._

"_Yes indeed," he continued. "Perfect for a serious student of botany, wouldn't you say? And I happen to know for a fact that the Nielosians are always keen to share their knowledge in the field with visitors."_

_The Doctor's smile widened and his fingers danced along the console._

"_Yes," he said. "A quiet leisurely holiday might be just what we need. Glad I thought of it."_

* * *

The Doctor stumbled and Peri almost fell face forward onto the ground before regaining her balance at the last minute. She grunted and tightened her grip on his arm which he had slung around her shoulders. She almost told him to hurry up, but was terrified to see that his eyes were glassy and that his face had grown even paler than it had been a few minutes ago.

"Peri," he said. "We should…we should split up…We could…."

"Forget it, Doctor," she snapped. "We're almost to the TARDIS, and there's no way I'm going to risk spending even one more minute on this planet than I have to. Now come on."

Peri took a deep breath and pulled him forward. The Doctor groaned, but began to speed up his pace. She couldn't hear their pursuers anymore, but she wasn't about to take any chances.

"Wretched girl," he muttered. "Never listens…to a word I say…."

A sharp retort was on the tip of Peri's tongue, but she immediately forgot it when she felt something seep into her shirt, the fabric starting to stick against her skin.

Her fear spiked a second later when she realized that it was blood.

* * *

_Their visit had started off pleasantly. The caretakers of the gardens had greeted them warmly and had been impressed with Peri's enthusiasm toward their work. It wasn't long before the two of them were offered a tour and an audience with a pair of botanists who worked at the laboratory that had been built to study the plants in the gardens._

_It was while they were in the middle of their tour when it happened. They were in the midst of a row of bright, violet-hued flowers with the Doctor asking the two scientists some questions about the planet where this particular set of flowers had come from. _

_Peri was gazing admiringly at the blooms themselves. Earlier, she had asked if she could take some samples from the gardens to study and was thrilled when they gave her permission. It didn't take long for her to decide to take one of these flowers for her collection._

_She thought about taking one of the flowers close to the main path when she saw an even more glorious specimen about a foot into the foliage. She carefully stepped over the ankle-high fence and gingerly made her way over so she could extract the flower. Then, making sure to avoid trampling over any of the other flowers, she edged back onto the path. She was startled to see the botanists staring at her, their faces white with shock._

"_You…you…," one of them hissed. "What…what are you….?"_

"_What have you done?!" the other one roared._

"_Wh-what?" Peri stuttered. "I, I thought you said it was ok if I took some samples of the flowers."_

"_Didn't you read the sign?" the first one said, pointing a shaking finger at the area where she had just walked. _

"_I can't believe this," the second said. "Is this how our hospitality is to be repaid? With willful acts of malice?"_

"_Didn't I say it? Didn't I?" the first one said, indignant. "I've said for years now that we should be more careful about who we allow into our gardens. Only thoroughly vetted scientists, not rude, callous tourists."_

"_Now see here," the Doctor said. "I'll admit that there might have been a bit of a faux pas on my assistant's part, but there is no need for…."_

"_I'm telling you, there is only way to discourage this kind of vandalism," the first one said. _

"_It's unfortunate, but I fear I must agree with you," the second one replied. "Swift and appropriately advertised executions are still the best deterrent."_

"_Wait a minute!" Peri cried. "Execution? What are you saying? What did I do?" _

"_Guards! Guards!" both scientists yelled. "Destroy them!"_

"_Run, Peri!" the Doctor shouted as he grabbed her arm and yanked her along._

_The Doctor and Peri dashed out of the gardens. They could hear the footsteps of the two scientists who had guided them around and soon that sound grew louder as more people joined them._

"_Hurry!" the Doctor bellowed. "We have to get back to the TARDIS."_

"_But Doctor," Peri shouted back. "What happened? Why are they doing this?"_

"_Because you managed to violate perhaps the only law that is still legally punishable by death on Nielos Five," he said._

"_What do you mean?"_

_The Doctor suddenly stopped running, his head swiveling about as he looked in all directions. Decision apparently made, he guided her to a nearby forest._

"_You ignored the 'Keep off the grass' sign," he said._

* * *

As she dragged the Doctor out of another clearing, Peri was beginning to fear that she had missed the path back to the TARDIS. However, less than a minute later, she was able to breathe a sigh of relief when she spied a battered police box only a couple yards away. The Doctor moaned and sank toward the ground, but Peri shook him and moved forward.

"Come on, Doctor," she said, panting. "Look; the TARDIS is right in front of us. We're almost there."

The Doctor looked up, his eyes clearing. With a surprising burst of energy, he straightened up and pushed her toward it. He retrieved the key from his pocket and unlocked the door so they could run inside. The Doctor yanked the lever to close the doors before frantically pushing buttons on the console.

"Doctor…?"

"Not now, Peri," he interrupted, his voice strained. He continued to manipulate the controls for a couple more minutes. Soon Peri heard the TARDIS dematerialize, and she wondered where the Doctor had set the coordinates to.

She didn't wonder for long, however, because almost as soon as they had left, the Doctor collapsed onto the floor. Peri rushed over and dropped down to her knees beside him.

"Doctor…."

"I…set coordinates," he gasped. "If I…it should…get you back…to Earth…."

"Doctor, please," she said, reaching for his hand. Her eyes clouded with tears at the all too familiar sight of the Doctor prone, and possibly dying, on the console room floor in front of her.

And just like the last time, it was all her fault.

* * *

"_Are you sure you know where you're going?" Peri whispered in the Doctor's ear as they hid in the middle of the underbrush. _

"_Of course I do," the Doctor snapped back while still keeping his voice low. "I've told you more than once that I have an unerring sense of direction."_

"_Unerring sense or not, I don't remember the TARDIS being this far away," Peri grumbled. "It's almost like we're running around in circles."_

"_Precisely," the Doctor said. "Now come on. We've got to go now before they figure it out."_

_However, before he could move, Peri grabbed his arm and glared at him._

"_You mean you've been purposely running us around in circles?" she hissed. _

"_Of course," the Doctor replied. "Like you said, we weren't that far away from the TARDIS."_

"_But why? Those people are trying to kill us."_

"_I know that," he said. "And I intend to leave this planet as soon as possible. But there is something I need to do first."_

"_What could possibly be so important as to risk getting shot?" Peri demanded. _

"_How about saving the lives of everyone who is working at those gardens," the Doctor said. "You remember those last flowers you were looking at? The Jaluria Orchids?"_

"_How could I forget?" Peri sighed. "It's the reason why we're having to run."_

"_Quite," the Doctor said. "But while you were busy breaking one of the most sacred laws of Nielos Five, I was asking those scientists where they had gotten those specimens. Turns out they're a very recent addition…from the planet Artrias."_

"_Is that bad?" Peri asked._

"_Bad? BAD?!" the Doctor said in his loudest possible whisper. "Try catastrophic. On most planets, the Jaluria Orchids are a lovely and benign addition to any garden. But when they were introduced to Artrias, they became something else entirely. The atmosphere on that planet caused them to develop a deadly mutation. After the bloom reaches its peak and begins to whither, they release spores that are deadly to most forms of humanoid life. Those flowers could wipe out everyone at those gardens at any moment."_

"_Wait, are you sure?" Peri asked. "I mean, shouldn't they already know about that?"_

"_Unfortunately, the scientists on this planet take little interest in botanical research that occurs in what they consider the backwater regions of the galaxy," he said. "Putting that aside, it's not exactly common knowledge. Once the native inhabitants found out about the orchids they made sure to eradicate most of the plants in a couple of weeks. I wouldn't have known about it myself if I hadn't made a quick stop there about oh, two or three regenerations ago and met with one of the scientists who discovered the mutation. It had slipped my mind at first, but I was in the middle of recalling it when your…indiscretion came to their notice."_

"_I said I was sorry, all right?" Peri said. "Ok, I get why you can't just run away, but what are you planning to do? Those guards don't look like they'll listen to reason."_

"_That's why I'm giving them the runaround, as you would call it," the Doctor said. "It's you they're after. If I can get you back to the TARDIS without them discovering its location, I can sneak back here and talk to the head of the research board, Doctor Sugan Broli. I did him a rather large favor a few decades ago. I know he'll listen to me."_

_The Doctor paused and looked like he was about to say something else, but instead he shoved Peri against the ground. Seconds later, a pair of guards ran past them. He waited for almost a minute after they had disappeared from sight before he stood up and helped Peri to her feet._

"_My strategy has worked," he grinned. "They have no idea where to look. Now, let's get you back to the TARDIS so I come back here and warn these people."_

"_Wait a minute," Peri protested. "How are you going to get to this guy, Broli? The guards will kill you if they catch you."_

"_So I'll just have to make sure that I continue to evade them," the Doctor said. "Simple enough. Especially with the unequivocally oblivious thugs they have running around the place. Now, come on."_

"_But Doctor…."_

"_I said, come on!" he nearly bellowed as he picked Peri up by the elbows and moved her along. Peri let out a yelp and wiggled out of his grip before reluctantly running alongside him._

_Unfortunately, their delay had given the guards a chance to find them. The Doctor barked at Peri to run faster as they weaved through the bushes and trees surrounding them. At one point, the Doctor took hold of her wrist and helped her race even faster away from their pursuers. They had almost lost the guards when Peri made the mistake of looking back behind her._

_It was only a second of distraction and hesitation, but it had been enough. Branches from a low-lying bush that she hadn't seen got tangled around her ankles and she fell onto the grass. Peri quickly sat up and tried to stand, but the branches continued to cling to her._

_The Doctor crouched down and helped her rip the branches off her ankles. However, by the time he was done and was able to get her back onto her feet, one of the guards had caught up with them and had raised his weapon. _

_The Doctor pushed Peri toward the ground behind him. She hit the grass just as the guard pulled the trigger. The Doctor let out a cry and collapsed into a heap onto the ground, colliding with Peri in the process. The guard marched over toward them, a smirk on his face. As he got closer, Peri reached around the Doctor's still form and grabbed a rock. The guard peered down at them, poking the Doctor with the muzzle of his weapon. _

_Suddenly, the Doctor rolled onto his back and kicked the weapon out of the guard's hands. Peri followed up by throwing the rock at the guard's head. The guard groaned and fell unconscious to the ground. _

"_Good work, Peri," the Doctor said while slowly moving into a kneeling position. "Your aim is improving all the time." _

"_Ugh, thanks," Peri said as she got back up to her feet. "Call it a necessary skill for our travels."_

_The Doctor nodded, but did not respond. He reached down to check on the pulse and breathing of the guard before pulling himself upright. He opened his mouth to say something, but the distant sound of voices stopped him._

"_Come on," he said, grabbing Peri's arm and yanking her along. "We have to keep moving." _

_The two of them ran for several minutes until the Doctor abruptly stopped and slumped against a tree, his breathing labored. _

"_Doctor?" Peri said tentatively. "Doctor, what's wrong?"_

_She reached over to touch his shoulder and the Doctor gasped and pulled away. Peri looked down at her hand and gulped when she saw that there was blood on it._

'_No!' she thought, her insides quaking. 'No, he's not supposed to be hurt. He…he was just trying to fool that guard into thinking he had been hit. He got right back up and was running with me just now. He can't be hurt…'_

"_Doctor…."_

"_We…have to get back…to the TARDIS," the Doctor said._

_He pulled his cravat off and tied it around his shoulder, His hands were shaking as he did it and Peri couldn't help but notice how ashen his face already was._

"_All right," she said. "But I won't go back by myself. We'll make it together."_

_The Doctor frowned, and Peri was sure that she was about to get another lecture about why she needed to learn to follow instructions. Instead, the Doctor sighed and nodded his head. _

_It was those quiet gestures that made her even more afraid._

"_Come on," he muttered. He started to walk away, but stumbled and clung to another tree to keep himself from falling down. Peri put her arm around his waist and guided one of his arms over her shoulder._

"_All right, Doctor," she said. "Let's go."_

* * *

As he lay on the floor of the console room, the Doctor groaned and closed his eyes. He was still for a few seconds before Peri grabbed his arm and tugged at it.

"Doctor? Doctor, wake up," she pleaded. "Come on." The Doctor's eyes fluttered back open.

"Peri," he breathed. "Got to get to the…medical bay."

He slowly pulled himself back up into a sitting position. Once he was there, Peri moved closer to his side and let him drape his arm around her shoulders again, supporting him as he got to his feet. Then they began the tortuous march to the medical bay of the TARDIS.

The medical bay was a room with a couple of beds and a healthy stock of medicines and equipment that enabled the Doctor to provide minor or preliminary emergency care to his companions.

Rare was the instance when he was the one who needed that care.

By the time they arrived, Peri practically had to drag the Doctor along, his strength just about gone. She helped him onto one of the beds and walked over to the shelves of equipment and supplies.

"I, I only learned the basics of first-aid when I first started college," she said with a laugh while her voice began to crack. "Wish I had paid better attention back then. Not that that would have prepared me for something like this. Wh-what if you need surgery or something?"

"Don't worry, Peri," the Doctor said. "Everything you need…is there. The projectile from their weapons went all the way through. It…it did not damage any organs…and there's no shrapnel."

"You're sure about that, aren't you?" Peri asked. "How can you be so certain?"

"Trust me…I'd know," the Doctor said as he struggled to bite back another groan. "Just…listen to me…and do exactly what I say….for a change…."

Peri made a show of rolling her eyes, but she felt none of the levity or annoyance she was pretending to have. She listened as the Doctor rattled off a list of the things she needed and gathered them up. Then she moved a small stand with wheels closer to the bed and dumped everything onto it, making sure to ignore the snort of disapproval from the bed. Peri took another deep breath and helped the Doctor out of his jacket and peeled his shirt away to find blood oozing from a wound that was a mere couple of inches from one of his hearts.

She swallowed hard as she carefully cleaned, mended, and dressed the wound according to his instructions. It wasn't until now that she realized just how much the scarlet tartan patches of his coat had concealed the actual amount of blood loss he had suffered and she wondered how he had been able to survive the trip back to the TARDIS. He amazed her again by staying conscious throughout all of her ministrations. Peri tried hard to convince herself that that was proof that his injury wasn't serious. But instead she found herself scoffing inwardly at how pathetic her attempts at reassurance sounded even when confined to her own mind.

By the time she was done, the only color on the Doctor's face was from his eyes: eyes that were half-open and glazed over with pain.

"I must rest," he whispered. "Peri, I…It might be a long while…before I wake up. And…when I do…I may be…different."

Peri sniffed as the tears she managed to hold back earlier tried again to leak out. He didn't actually say the words, but in the back of her mind, she could guess what he was hinting at: regeneration. The method by which the Time Lords were able to survive and adapt to the realities of traveling through the universe of time.

The Doctor thought that he might die again.

"Don't say that, Doctor," Peri said, forcing herself to smile as she gingerly touched his arm. "It, it'll be ok. You'll see. So don't worry about it."

The Doctor studied her face for a long moment before closing his eyes. Peri thought that he had fallen unconscious, but a few seconds later, his lips moved again.

"Wh-what?" she asked, leaning closer. "I can't hear what you're saying."

"I'm…sorry…Peri," he rasped out.

He let out one more shuddering breath before his head flopped to the side, his cheek buried into his pillow. Peri sniffed again as she watched the barely perceptible rise and fall of his chest. She tried to remind herself that, no matter what, the Doctor would survive and that this wouldn't be the end.

It wasn't until several minutes had passed and she was certain that he would not be waking up any time soon that Peri finally let the tears fall.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: Finally, next chapter. I am really sorry it took me so long to update this one, but honestly, I was stuck on this chapter for a long time and then academics got in the way. But I think I'm back on track now and have already started work on the next chapter. So I'm thinking there won't be such a long lag time between this update and the next one.

At any rate, I hope my readers will think it (and future chapters) are worth the wait. As for my two anom reviewers, yes, I really did plan on updating this. Sorry about the wait. :)

I do not own Doctor Who or any of its characters.

Thank you to everyone who is reading/following/favoriting/reviewing this. It is always appreciated.

Chapter Two

Three days later, not much had changed.

The Doctor was still comatose, and Peri continued her almost constant vigil in a chair at his bedside. She tried to be relieved that his condition had not deteriorated any further, but that did not change the fact that it had not improved either.

Peri stretched her arms over her head and yawned. Fulfilling some preset course the Doctor had fed into the navigation bank, the TARDIS had materialized somewhere on Earth. After it had landed, Peri had glanced at their current surroundings on the scanner, but did not go outside. From what she could tell, they were in a cluttered corner of an abandoned warehouse. Guessing that they probably wouldn't be noticed where they were and not eager to check out the neighborhood that this building belonged to, Peri decided that it was better to stay inside for now.

Peri lowered her arms and looked down at the still form lying on the bed. Despite her attempts to rationalize staying inside, she knew that the main reason she hadn't gone anywhere was because she couldn't bear to do it. Not while she didn't know if the Doctor would ever regain consciousness.

At least, in this form anyway.

She yawned again and reached over to take one of his hands in both of hers. She flinched at how cold it was. Granted, Peri was aware of and used to the fact that his naturally lower body temperature made it so that his hands were always cooler than what human hands were. Still, that combined with his grey pallor and far too shallow breathing made her worried that perhaps he was getting worse after all.

"Doctor?" she said, leaning closer to him. "It's me. It's Peri. Doctor, can you hear what I'm saying?"

There was no response from the figure on the bed. Peri's shoulders slumped down and she sighed.

'_Well, that was a dumb question, wasn't it, Peri?' _she told herself. '_With the state he's in, it'd be a miracle if he was even remotely aware of anything right now. Besides, if he had heard me he would have cut me off before I got to that last question anyway.'_

Despite her anxiety, a small smile appeared on her face. When she first met the Doctor, she had noticed that he often had plenty of frustratingly vague or incomprehensible things to talk about. That tendency did not change in the slightest after he regenerated into his current form. Peri smiled a little more when she thought about how, if anything, it intensified. Be it snatches of poetry, explanations steeped in riddles, swaths of dense techno-babble, bad puns, and scathing bits of sarcasm; this Doctor never ran out of things to say. With most of it being delivered in a more than sufficiently loud voice.

This was the reason why Peri hated the silence that had pervaded the TARDIS these last three days. Before, the atmosphere was always lively with the Doctor at the center of it all which was where Peri suspected he liked to be. Now, the environment seemed too empty and sterile without the Doctor's energetic presence.

Peri smiled again. The irony that she actually longed to hear another one of his booming, pretentious monologues after spending months dreading them did not escape her. Her smile vanished, however, when she looked back at his face.

Sometimes, Peri tried to console herself by thinking about how he looked like he was just resting, admittedly a rare sight. Even after his traumatic regeneration, the Doctor hardly ever wanted to rest. Peri figured that it was probably good for him to get some real sleep for a change. But then something he had told her not long after he regenerated would always come back to her.

"_Rest? Nonsense. Rest is for the weary. Sleep is for the dead…."_

Those words were very effective in shattering any comforting thoughts she might entertain about the Doctor sleeping peacefully.

Peri moved one hand to brush a couple of springy locks off his forehead.

"Doctor," she said quietly. "Come on, wake up. Please. Don't leave me."

Peri gulped and stopped talking while continuing to run her fingers through his tangle of golden curls. She thought about how, in the past when they were in danger, she sometimes worried about what she would do or how she would get home if anything happened to the Doctor. However, this time he had made sure that she wouldn't have to worry about things like that. She was home and that meant that she could conceivably slide back into her old life. Almost as if nothing had happened, almost as if she hadn't been spending almost a year of her life traveling across galaxies and centuries.

But Peri knew that it couldn't be that way. She couldn't just go back to her mother and step-father and to her botany studies and pretend that everything was just like how it was before. Despite knowing that the Doctor might have brought her back to the precise moment when her planned vacation from the university was supposed to end, Peri realized that she didn't want to leave him. Maybe someday, but not now, and certainly not under circumstances like this.

Peri let go of the Doctor's hand and tried to smooth down his hair one last time with her palm, the curls immediately bouncing back to their original positions as she removed her hand. Then she studied him for a moment more before turning her attention to the medicines and dressings on the stand next to the bed.

By this point, the wound had just about healed with only a thin, red line indicating where the original injury had taken place. Throughout this, Peri had been amazed at how fast the mending process had been. She often wondered if it was due to the advanced medical supplies available on the TARDIS, some special physical capabilities that Time Lords possessed, or a combination of both.

Peri dutifully treated the wound and gave him a fresh set of bandages. She wasn't sure if it was doing much good for his overall condition anymore, but she figured that it was probably best to keep following his exact instructions regarding his treatment for the time being. As she finished her ministrations, Peri felt guilt well up inside her for all those times when she had focused solely on her own wellbeing and future when she and the Doctor were in peril.

'_All those times…all those times when we stumbled into one ridiculously hazardous situation after another…the Doctor, he always made sure that nothing serious happened to me. Oh sure, I've had to put up with a bunch of cosmic psychos pawing at me or threatening my life. But even then, he was always putting himself in a lot more danger. Usually, it ended up being no big deal, but….not always.'_

'_Not this time.'_

Peri swiped at a stray tear that had fallen out of her eye and took a deep breath. She suddenly felt very tired and decided that she needed a break. After the Doctor had first slipped into a coma, she had tried to stay with him almost every minute. But after a day of that, she realized that she wasn't going to be much help to him if she was falling over from exhaustion or hunger. Thus, she tried to make sure to take time to eat and sleep in between long stretches of watching over him.

She stood up and stretched again before bending down to pull the blankets back up to his shoulders.

"I, I'll be back in a little while," she said. "If you need anything just…. Well, I'll be here anyway. It's not like there's anything worth seeing outside the TARDIS. And, and I, I'm sure you don't really want to stay in a boring, old place like this. Not when there are all those exciting places you keep telling me about on this side of the galaxy. Besides, you still owe me a trip to the Eye of Orion. Remember?"

Peri let out a forced laugh and patted the blankets. Then she backed out of the room, hesitating when she got to the hallway.

"Doctor…I…I just….Please get better."

The Doctor did not respond and Peri nodded her head as she trudged away toward the kitchen.

* * *

Four hours later, Peri returned somewhat refreshed after having eaten a light meal and taken a nap. She sighed when she glanced over at the bed and saw that the Doctor hadn't moved while she was gone. A book from the TARDIS library in her hands, she walked over and plopped down onto her chair and was about to start reading when she noticed just how still he was.

"Doctor?" she said, dropping her book to the floor. "Doctor, can you hear me?"

Peri felt her insides quake as she moved to sit on the edge of the bed so she could get a closer look. His face was even more waxen and he didn't appear to be breathing. She grabbed his wrist, trying to find the twin pulse that was normal for him, but was terrified to discover no trace of any heartbeats.

"Doctor?" she said, her voice beginning to waver. "Doctor! Come on, wake up. Wake up, please."

She tugged at his arm and shook him a little, but there was no response from the prone figure. She checked again for a pulse while placing one hand on his chest in an effort to detect even the slightest movement. After another minute of searching and finding no signs of life, Peri let go of him, her hands falling limply into her lap.

"Doctor…" she whispered.

Tears welled up in her eyes and this time, Peri did nothing to hold them back. It was clear to her that the Doctor had died at some point while she was out of the room. She immediately felt a new surge of guilt for not being there for him when it happened and wept for several minutes before a new thought suddenly struck her.

He hadn't regenerated.

Peri hiccupped as she tried to get a hold of herself. Even though she hated to think about it, her thoughts went back to the day when he regenerated into this incarnation. Time had seemed to stop when he struggled out of her arms and fell back onto the console room floor. But looking back on it now, Peri remembered that it was only a few moments after that before there was a flash of light and the Doctor sat back up, completely changed. In fact, she wasn't entirely sure if she had seen him die before the metamorphosis occurred.

However, this time was not like that at all. The Doctor was cold and still and appeared to have been like this for a while. There was no hint that he was about to transform again.

'_I don't understand. Why didn't he change? I thought he said that Time Lords changed whenever they reached the end of their current life.'_

'_So why hasn't it happened this time? Did something go wrong…or…?'_

Fresh tears sprung for her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She recalled him saying once that Time Lords could only regenerate twelve times and after that, death was permanent. He had told her that he was in his sixth incarnation, but now she was beginning to wonder if he had been truthful with her.

'_Maybe this was his last life,' _she thought. '_Maybe he just said that this is…was his sixth form so I wouldn't be anxious whenever we got into all those dangerous situations. "Don't worry so much, Peri. If anything happens to me, I'll regenerate."….Yeah, I can see him doing that.'_

'_Or did something go wrong this time? Maybe all that blood loss was too much of a shock for him to regenerate? I guess something like that would take a lot of energy. Maybe…maybe he didn't have enough….'_

Peri's shoulders heaved as her breath came out in short hitches. Even if she had answers to any of these questions, none of them really mattered. The Doctor was dead and this time he wouldn't be coming back.

That epiphany finally broke through the last vestiges of Peri's control and she began to cry. She drooped down and buried her face against his chest while clinging to his arms. She didn't know what she should do nor did she care. All she knew for sure was that a good man, a man who had helped countless others throughout space and time, had died alone.

Peri's sobs increased as she thought about the unfairness of it all: a man like him losing his life because of a moment of clumsiness on her part. Although she preferred to think that he would die of old age at the end of his regenerations, Peri thought that maybe she could learn to accept a more sudden death if it was in the service of some grand, important mission like saving the universe or at least an entire planet.

At this moment, however, Perpugilliam Brown was faced with the reality that the Doctor had thrown his life away for her a second time and the certainty that she would never be able to make peace with that.

"Doctor," she wept. "I…I, I…."

"Peri, I know that I warned you before about too many 'I's' in one sentence."

Peri squealed and bolted upright, the sudden motion causing her to fall backwards onto the floor. She would have been both irritated and embarrassed right then had she not been so astonished by what she was seeing.

The Doctor's eyes had opened and he was taking a deep breath as he slowly hoisted himself into a sitting position. He put a hand to his face and shook his head before looking down at her.

"Peri?" he said, concerned. "What are you doing down there? Are you all right?"

He reached out a hand toward her, but she let out a short cry and scooted away.

"Peri?" the Doctor said. "What's wrong? Why are you…?"

"N-no," Peri gasped. "It, it's not…y-you were dead. I, I saw…."

"No, not dead," the Doctor replied. "Merely in the final stages of a healing coma."

"Wh-what? I, I don't…what?"

"It's part of the physiology of a Time Lord," the Doctor went on to explain. "When severely wounded, a Time Lord can put oneself into a sort of suspended animation so that all of the body's resources can be focused on repairing the damage. Mind you, toward the end, it can have the appearance of death, but that is just our bodies' way of directing what energy we have left toward preparing ourselves to reawaken."

"Awaken?" Peri repeated, mortified. "You, you mean you were waking up when…when I…."

"Slowly, yes," the Doctor nodded. "If it makes you feel better, you're not the first to mistake the healing coma for death. Poor Jo and Sarah Jane made that mistake too once or twice."

"Gee, nice to know I'm not the only one," Peri said, bowing her head.

"Quite," the Doctor said. "At least now, you'll have this knowledge for future reference. Now, how long was I out?"

"Three days," Peri said. She got up and wiped her eyes vigorously. Once they were clearer, she glanced over to see him staring at her, his eyes wide with shock.

"Three days?!" he gasped. "But that…that means…."

The Doctor bolted out of bed and ran into the corridor. Peri hesitated for a moment before running after him. She could guess where he was going, and once she made it to the console room, her guess was proven right.

"Doctor?" she gasped. "What…?"

"We've got to get back to Nielos," he said, his head bent down over the controls. "I didn't have a chance to go back and warn them about those orchids. Unfortunately, the workers at the gardens have more than likely perished, but there still might be survivors."

"Doctor, you can't go back there," Peri insisted. "Those people tried to kill you…and they almost succeeded."

"I haven't forgotten, Peri," the Doctor said.

"Well you could have fooled me," she retorted. "Doctor, please listen to me. I, I thought you were dead…."

"I know, I know," the Doctor said. "But I've told you that I'm fine now. You don't need to worry."

"But you don't know," Peri said. "You don't understand. When I thought…when you were…I, I thought you were going to change again."

"Disappointed that I didn't?" the Doctor quipped, his eyes hard despite the levity in his tone.

Peri's mouth fell open. Originally, she was going to say more, but those words had pushed any response she had out of her mind, leaving only the raw wound that his apparent 'death' had created. Seconds later, she turned and ran out of the console room.

"Peri!" he called after her.

But Peri didn't stop until she reached her living quarters on the TARDIS. Once she was there, she slammed the door behind her and threw herself onto her bed.

As the tears welled up in her eyes again, she thought about just how wrong the Doctor had been. She hadn't been disappointed when he didn't change. She had been scared. During her recent travels, she had seen so much death. Sure, the Doctor always did everything he could to save lives wherever he went, but not every life could be saved. There were still so many who were lost, so many futures that were cut short.

One of the ways she had been able to cope with this was by reminding herself that the Doctor was the one person who could cheat death and who could do so again if he had to. His was a presence she could count on to be there even when things looked their blackest, their most hopeless.

Despite her fervent desire to see him survive, however, another part of her was also scared that he would have to regenerate again.

The first time had been confusing and frightening enough. Even though she was eventually able to fully wrap her head around the concept, that did not change the fact that she had somehow managed to lose someone she who had quickly become dear to her, someone who was not just important to her, but to the universe. That loss was something, she would never forget.

Peri sniffed hard and laid her head down onto her pillow. The months that followed that followed the Doctor's regeneration had not always been easy ones. That first week after it had happened, Peri had serious doubts that she could ever learn to live with this new, alien, brash, abrasive Doctor, who seemed so far away from the man she knew before. More than once, she had been tempted to demand that he take her back to Earth. The one thing that always stopped her was his prediction that she might change her mind once she got to know his new self. It seemed very unlikely, but Peri was convinced that she owed him a chance to be proven right.

Still, as the days passed, bit by bit, Peri actually did begin to see him differently, just as he had predicted. Even after his radical change, she started to notice glimpses of the person she recognized: the way he dashed about the console while navigating the Time Vortex, the look he got in his eyes whenever they materialized onto a planet he hadn't visited before, the almost child-like curiosity he had when faced with new people and new experiences. Those glimpses and many more besides eventually helped her come to terms with the bizarre truth that, while the Doctor had change in a lot of ways, he was also the same person she knew before.

Peri scrubbed her eyes again. Having witnessed the Doctor come so precariously close to death again had revealed one crucial thing she had not noticed: that somehow, somewhere along the way, she had grown attached to this Doctor and that her feelings had evolved into something even deeper than what existed before in his previous incarnation.

Even more importantly, Peri was certain that a part of her would also die if she had to endure that kind of loss again. This epiphany frightened her, confused her and angered her in equal measure.

"Peri. Peri, please open the door."

Peri buried her face into her pillow. She could hear the concern in the Doctor's muffled voice on the other side of the door, but she couldn't face him. Not right now. He said her name a couple more times and knocked at the door before she finally raised her head.

"Leave me alone," she shouted at him. "Please, Doctor…just…just go away."

There was a moment of silence and Peri was almost sure that she could hear the sound of footsteps move even closer to the door. Then there was a barely perceptible tap as if the Doctor had brushed the door with his fingertips.

"Peri…I'm sorry."

The footsteps retreated and soon Peri was alone again. She curled up and squeezed her pillow close to her. She didn't know how long it would be before she could stand to come out of her room.

Nor did she know how they could go back to how things were before.


End file.
